Testing some Microsoft Surface devices out (and yes, I love the Duo)

We’ve been testing some of the Microsoft Surface kit out as we look to deliver a hardware strategy in the Autumn. We’ve now had more than a year of using iPods for Vitals, 6 months of Dell convertible laptops for EPMA, and in between a range of iPad Minis, iPad Pros and all kinds of laptops! Across the hospital we now have a whole heap of experience of managing kit and seeing how staff on wards use it.

Increasingly as we look at kit in a hospital we’re thinking of what’s their useful life in a ward mobile setting, how easy it to keep clean from an infection control point of view (Alcantara keyboards don’t cut it….) and what’s the usability for s member of staff walking the wards for 3 hours at a time.

As we move to Cloud and look to a new hospital we’re also thinking increasingly of virtual desktops (for speed, consistency of experience, estate management etc) and thin clients (power consumption, carbon footprint etc).

Some scenarios

At this point I’m not worrying about ‘back office functions’ (not sure I like that term) but scenarios where staff are mobile and in a moderately robust setting. The 2 we’ve been looking at are:

• Our IT desktop support team are out and about around the Trust every day — they use the Richmond Service desk tool, and use common applications like Teams and email. A laptop is too bulky for them and currently they use an Android smartphone (except it isn’t smart, it’s bricked by Blackberry UEM). We are considering iPhones but actually having the ability to see two open applications at once is really helpful.
• And of course ward based staff — whether that is the admin staff who support ward rounds or the Registrar, FY1 and FY2 doctors. On ward rounds it’s common for 30 patients to be seen and each involves checking the patient record in our PAS, checking test results and increasingly checking what meds have been given via EPMA. These are different pieces of software and some are limited to working on iOS, some Windows only, and some need decent screen real estate for the volume of data that needs to be viewed. And ward rounds take 3 hours, so any computing equipment needs to be near, able to maintain power, and if you’re carrying it light and able to take some stick (we have ‘COWS’ — computer on wheels but they’re bulky and expensive)

The hardware

In the last couple of weeks I’ve tried a Microsoft Surface Pro 7, a Surface Go 2, and a Duo. Two of these are brilliant, and one’s pretty damn good.

For me the Surface Pro 7 is the equivalent of a laptop (I know, insightful), increasingly I’m finding a touchscreen on a laptop really useful, and I like being able to sketch with a pen. But I still like a good keyboard I can bang my words out on, and often find myself typing on the sofa, or in a random chair somewhere or on my lap on a train (in the good ol days). It’s a little heavy to carry around in the cradle of your arm and use the pen on it and the keyboard can flex in a non-desk setting. With pen and keyboard and case it’s also in the £1,000+ range which brings it a whole load of competition — including the Dell XPS 13 convertible I use on a daily basis. But nice, and will definitely be in the mix when we look at laptops.

The surprise for me is the Surface Go 2. It’s brilliant. It’s small so you can carry it anywhere — I found it lighter than my iPad — the screen resolution is great for all applications — the keyboard is fine for my hands and it detaches! This is important for ward use as we’re finding keyboards are getting damaged with heavy use — keys falling off and the ‘fabric’ of the keyboard splitting with heavy use. Whereas we write off laptops over 3 years (sometime 5 ☹) I think ward kit will be lucky if it lasts 2, and keyboards might need replacing in 9 months — which will be ok if they’re £80. We’ve lent a Surface Go2 to Clare to help with ward rounds on DDU and she loves it. We’re going to buy a few more to test in other scenarios/on other wards and it can fulfil all that a laptop can as well as most things I use an iPad for. It’s also affordable c. £500 depending on RAM you go for. That’s a bargain.

The geek in me wanted to love the Duo — and it didn’t disappoint — it’s the coolest bit of kit I’ve had my hands on since I’ve used technology from the 90s. It’s beautiful to hold, the engineering of the hinge is super robust and the way the screen works is really intuitive. And this is where the desktop team love it — on one screen they can have Richmond open with service tickets showing, on the other they can have Teams or email — and it’s a phone! For reading I prefer to turn the screen portrait and then it’s a really nice scrollable screen size. And I’ve never seen such a screen where the pixels of type are so clear and so ‘on the surface’ — a bit weird but have a try (if you can find one)

It’s weird using Android on Microsoft kit and I suspect it’s bricked to v10 Android, it’s also ‘quite pocketable’ but you notice it more than an iPhone SE.

For me it’s a usable smartphone (it doesn’t need to compete with hi-end iPhones) but more importantly it’s a brilliant small computer with a super sophisticated screen that allows you to use applications in a way that mirrors a large dual monitor setup. The only ouch point is price — at £1,500 it was way too ouch-y but you can now get it discounted to £1,100. We’re probably going to get a couple of these for the support teams as it will pay for itself in terms of productivity, and we’ll explore how it can be used in clinical areas but that will mean any software will need to be good web based applications so the Android OS doesn’t get in the way

And yes I know the v1 is coming to end of life… (in the US you can get it for $700 but they won’t ship to the UK, by the time Mary goes to NYC in November it may be even cheaper and I’m seriously tempted to buy one personally)

I’ve had or played with most windows mobile devices since c 2000 and this is easily the best ever, great for specialist applications and will be looking keenly at ver 2 if it ships later in the Autumn.

So there you go Surface Go 2 has many applications and is great — really uniquely functional, the Duo is fantastic for where it fits a model of use, and the Surface Pro 7 is a great laptop but it has lots of competition!